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Kayak Fishing , Small Boats, Big Fish
Sea Kayaks offers one of the best opportunities in the world to see a places from a different perspective. There is nothing quite like circumnavigating a desolate nook of Alaska or paddling around uninhabited Pacific islands by kayak to affect your outlook on just about everything. But kayaks also offer a suburb way for fisherfolk to reach spots where the fish are plentiful and the challenge of
Fishing Report by Jim Matthews
HESPERIA LAKE: Big catfish continue to be landed along with limits of fish averaging 1-0 to 4-0. There have been nine catfish over 30-0 landed in the last two weeks. The best bite continues to be on the mealworm and marshmallow combo, a nightcrawler and marshmallow combo, shrimp, or mackerel.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Local landings were worried. It was nearing the middle of July and still no sign of the migratory sand bass and barracuda that are staples for local boats and their passengers.
Kyle Petty - Dodge teleconference
Note: Kyle Petty will make NASCAR Nextel Cup career start number 733 at Pocono Raceway this weekend. He ranks seventh all-time in most Cup career starts. Petty won the spring race at Pocono in 1993 after leading 148 laps. He earned his best finish this year at Bristol, where he finished eighth.
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The Redondo Beach pier, for example, is eclectic and tourist-oriented, crammed with seafood restaurants, gift shops, and an arcade. The Belmont Shore pier caters to people who are serious about fishing. Yet despite their differences, all piers share a few constants: the stiff breeze, the sea gulls edging each other off the railings, the heart-stopping sunsets.
Most of Southern California's newer piers are made of concrete and steel to increase their durability, but our favorites are the creosote-scented platforms built on cross-braced wood pilings. Half the fun of these piers is walking out over the ocean, visible through gaps in the planks, and feeling the entire structure tremble beneath you as the swells build before crashing on shore.
We've selected 16 of our favorite piers, both wood and concrete. Piers are listed from south to north by city.
Ocean Beach. Ocean Beach is to San Diego what Venice Beach is to Los Angeles. It's a little funky, but the mix of people is lively - from old residents to newbies, the hip to the homeless. The pier itself, at 1,971 feet, is the longest concrete structure on the coast. Its gull wing-shaped end is a favorite of the fishing crowd. A bait-and-tackle shop sits next door to a cafe, where some days the special is all-you-can-eat pancakes for $.
Pacific Beach. Looking like a blue-and-white Alamo, the Crystal Pier Hotel ("Sleep Over The Ocean") guards the entry to this landmark as languidly as Sinjin, the blond Labrador usually found napping in the office doorway. Older cottages closer to the foot of the pier rent for $140 to $165 a day; newer cottages, with kitchenettes and private decks where you can watch the surfers below, run from $165 to $180; call (619) 483-6983.
Oceanside. This wooden pier first opened on July 4, 1927. About halfway out are twin towers, joined by a footbridge, housing a lifeguard post and a bait shop. At the end is an excellent oyster bar and seafood restaurant, where you can dine on steamed clams while watching locals haul in mackerel and white croaker.
San Clemente. This picturesque wooden pier is also convenient for rail travelers - Amtrak stops at its foot twice a day. Although it opened in 1928 as Southern California's first pleasure pier (meaning it had amusement park-style rides and such), today the 1,200-foot-long boardwalk is known for a seafood restaurant on its south side and an oyster bar on its north. It's also known for fishing: the end of the pier is virtually reserved for the sport, so that's where you'll find the bait-and-tackle shop.
Balboa Pier. Ruby's, a popular '40s-style diner ubiquitous to Southern California piers, is one of the big draws. The other is the view. On a clear day, you can see the San Gabriel Mountains and the peaks of Saddleback inland, and Santa Catalina Island offshore.
Newport Beach. The historic dory fleet, which has been fishing here for more than 100 years, still sells its catch alongside the pier. On a typical morning, you'll find fishmongers offering crab, mackerel, rockfish, greenling, and sea bass. A seafood restaurant and bar cap the end of the pier.
Huntington Beach. Longer and wider than the old structure, the new pier enhances a massive redevelopment project on shore. One of the new pier's most prominent fixtures is a sandwich-board sign listing 13 municipal offenses - from overhead casting to jumping into the surf.
Seal Beach. Winter storms damaged the wooden structure at the end of Main Street, but the pier reopened in May. With sweeping views of Long Beach, including the Queen Mary, it's a great place to have a meal, at the diner on the end (another Ruby's).
Belmont Shore. Day and night, you'll find anglers pulling in struggling bonito and mackerel, but this short pier is also a good place to take in the Oil Islands, those peculiar oil-drilling platforms disguised to resemble island resorts.
Redondo Beach. The horseshoe pier, with awnings shaped like sails and planter boxes stuffed with palm trees, reopened in February. It's two piers, really. Stroll along the old wooden pier, jammed with snack shops and seafood restaurants, or the new concrete deck, with etched dolphins sandblasted into the open walkway and portal openings in the railings.
Hermosa Beach. This utilitarian pier, anchored by Thelen's Mermaid Restaurant at the foot and a snack bar on the end, resembles a concrete rainbow arching up from the sand and settling back down over the water 1,140 feet later. The pier is popular with people who like to fish, most of whom completely ignore the "No Overhead Casting" signs.
Manhattan Beach. Around the pier, you'll find lots of people out for a jog or a skate. At pier's end is the Roundhouse Marine Studies Lab and Aquarium, a nice destination for kids, thanks to such displays as a shark tank and a tidepool exhibit on marine life in Santa Monica Bay.
Santa Monica. The one and only. If you had only half a day to show off . to a foreign visitor, this would be the place to go. It's got beaches and bodies straight out of "Baywatch," a legendary wooden carousel, carnival booths, seafood restaurants, joggers in Spandex, human jukeboxes, and, of course, Doreena's Tarot Cards and Palm Reading.
Ventura. California's longest wooden pier has been destroyed and rebuilt several times since 1872, and had to be closed again this winter just months after its latest reconstruction. But it's open now, though with few amenities (a water sculpture at its end has drawn raves, but a planned restaurant was still vacant when we checked in mid-June).
Santa Barbara. Once upon a time, Steams Wharf was owned by Jimmy Cagney, who planned to turn it into an amusement park until he realized how much it would cost. By the time the city took over the structure in the '70s, the wharf was pretty dilapidated. But today it is a bona fide tourist attraction, with curio shops, pricey restaurants, and the Sea Center, a terrific museum with a touch tank and a replica of a California gray whale hanging from the ceiling.
Port San Luis. The Hartford pier just south of San Luis Obispo is an old wooden structure that has held on to its working origins. Check out the sport-fishing concession, wholesale and retail seafood companies, and the Olde Port Inn, a great seafood restaurant housed in an old railroad warehouse, where a narrow-gauge train used to pick up fish unloaded at the pier.
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